There Is No Fiction In This Idea; It Is
Merely The Simple And Commonplace Fact, That With A Fall Of
Fifteen hundred feet in a thousand miles, with a river that
supplies an unlimited quantity of water and mud at
A particular
season, a supply could be afforded to a prodigious area, that
would be fertilized not only by irrigation, but by the annual
deposit of soil from the water, allowed to remain upon the
surface. This suggestion might be carried out by gradations; the
great work might be commenced by a single dam above the first
cataract at Assouan, at a spot where the river is walled in by
granite hills; at that place, the water could be raised to an
exceedingly high level, that would command an immense tract of
country. As the system became developed, similar dams might be
constructed at convenient intervals that would not only bring
into cultivation the neighbouring deserts, but would facilitate
the navigation of the river, that is now impeded, and frequently
closed, by the numerous cataracts. By raising the level of the
Nile sixty feet at every dam, the cataracts would no longer
exist, as the rocks which at present form the obstructions would
be buried in the depths of the river. At the positions of the
several dams, sluice gates and canals would conduct the shipping
either up or down the stream. Were this principle carried out as
far as the last cataracts, near Khartoum, the Soudan would no
longer remain a desert; the Nile would become not only the
cultivator of those immense tracts that are now utterly
worthless, but it would be the navigable channel of Egypt for the
extraordinary distance of twenty-seven degrees of
latitude--direct from the Mediterranean to Gondokoro, N. lat. 4
degrees 54 minutes.
The benefits, not only to Egypt, but to civilization, would be
incalculable; those remote countries in the interior of Africa
are so difficult of access, that, although we cling to the hope
that at some future time the inhabitants may become enlightened,
it will be simply impossible to alter their present condition,
unless we change the natural conditions under which they exist.
From a combination of adverse circumstances, they are excluded
from the civilized world: the geographical position of those
desert-locked and remote countries shuts them out from personal
communication with strangers: the hardy explorer and the
missionary creep through the difficulties of distance in their
onward paths, but seldom return: the European merchant is rarely
seen, and trade resolves itself into robbery and piracy upon the
White Nile, and other countries, where distance and difficulty of
access have excluded all laws and political surveillance.
Nevertheless, throughout that desert, and neglected wilderness,
the Nile has flowed for ages, and the people upon its banks are
as wild and uncivilized at the present day as they were when the
Pyramids were raised in Lower Egypt. The Nile is a blessing only
half appreciated; the time will arrive when people will look in
amazement upon a mighty Egypt, whose waving crops shall extend,
far beyond the horizon, upon those sandy and thirsty deserts
where only the camel can contend with exhausted nature. Men will
look down from some lofty point upon a network of canals and
reservoirs, spreading throughout a land teeming with fertility,
and wonder how it was that, for so many ages, the majesty of the
Nile had been concealed. Not only the sources of that wonderful
river had been a mystery from the earliest history of the world,
but the resources and the power of the mighty Nile are still
mysterious and misunderstood.
In all rainless countries, artificial irrigation is the first law
of nature, it is self-preservation; but, even in countries where
the rainfall can be depended upon with tolerable certainty,
irrigation should never be neglected; one dry season in a
tropical country may produce a famine, the results of which may
be terrible, as instanced lately by the unfortunate calamity in
Orissa. The remains of the beautiful system of artificial
irrigation that was employed by the ancients in Ceylon, attest
the degree of civilization to which they had attained; in that
island the waters of various rivers were conducted into valleys
that were converted into lakes, by dams of solid masonry that
closed the extremity, from which the water was conducted by
artificial channels throughout the land. In those days, Ceylon
was the most fertile country of the East; her power equalled her
prosperity; vast cities teeming with a dense population stood
upon the borders of the great reservoirs, and the people revelled
in wealth and plenty. The dams were destroyed in civil warfare;
the wonderful works of irrigation shared in the destruction; the
country dried up; famine swallowed up the population; and the
grandeur and prosperity of that extraordinary country collapsed
and withered in the scorching sun, when the supply of water was
withdrawn.
At the present moment, ten thousand square miles lie desolate in
thorny jungles, where formerly a sea of waving rice-crops floated
on the surface; the people are dead, the glory is departed. This
glory had been the fruit of irrigation. All this prosperity might
be restored: but in Egypt there has been no annihilation of a
people, and the Nile invites a renewal of the system formerly
adopted in Ceylon; there is an industrious population crowded
upon a limited space of fertile soil, and yearning for an
increase of surface. At the commencement of this work, we saw the
Egyptians boating the earth from the crumbling ruins, and
transporting it with arduous labour to spread upon the barren
sandbanks of the Nile, left by the retreating river; they were
striving for every foot of land thus offered by the exhausted
waters, and turning into gardens what in other countries would
have been unworthy of cultivation. Were a system of irrigation
established upon the principle that I have proposed, the
advantages would be enormous. The silt deposited in the
Mediterranean, that now chokes the mouths of the Nile, and blocks
up harbours, would be precipitated upon the broad area of
newly-irrigated lands, and by the time that the water arrived at
the sea, it would have been filtered in its passage, and have
become incapable of forming a fresh deposit.
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